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NY Journal of Books: The Inconvenient Indian

By
Marilyn Gates

NY Journal of Books

March 25, 2014

As a child, acclaimed author Dr. Thomas King and his friends loved to play cowboys and Indians. A family photo shows a tough little hombre in leather vest and chaps, crowned by a cowboy hat. But nobody wanted to play an Indian because they were Indians (Dr. King is Cherokee). And it was better to be an Indian disguised as a cowboy in North America after the native people discovered Columbus!

In The Inconvenient Indian: A Curious Account of Native People in North America, Dr. King conveys what it feels like to be an Indian—an unexpectedly persistent obstacle to White settlers’ exploitation of usurped land, despite centuries of policies devised to exterminate, relocate, educate or assimilate the original occupants.